You sure it has been cut? Yeah, we've seen the t-100 without railgun, but couldn't it just be becuase there is different versions of the t-100?

Yes, because a tank with a main gun using ludicrous amounts of electricity is supposed to be realistic.
/downvoted

Let it die.

I was heartbroken when I heard it was possibly cut. I cried myself to sleep for the next week, wondering how I'll be able to play Arma 3 without its glorious presence. It would be even better if both version of the T-100 were featured, the version at E3 shown with the conventional cannon and the earlier shown version with a railgun. Regardless, upvoted.

If we get insectoid Iranians, I sure as hell want my railgun laser tanks. Make it happen, BIS.

Lanter, praise be to your enlightened soul!

Fadi I see we are hewn from the same rock. Perhaps together we can stand tall against this oppression and fight for what is right.

p00d73, you poor lost soul. I hope you can be brought back to the light!

runekn, That is what we're led to believe. If I am wrong, then praise be to Bohemia for their wondrous blessing. If not, then I can only hope we can convince them otherwise.

Does the railgun act so different form a traditional KE cannon that a mod can't achieve it without proper engine suppot?
I don't know yet, but as long as electromagnetic projectile devices can be tweak form "guns" in the game, it shouldn't be a problem.

Vote yes for proposition 0010380.

Show gay nerds the true consensus around here.

Bohemia, you already have it modeled - just add it as a variant. I'd be completely ok with it being functionally identical to a normal tank just with different sound effects and particles.

Or leave it in the data for a modder to find or something pls <3. Like the bloke said above "If we get insectoid Iranians, I sure as hell want my railgun laser tanks.".

The people who are afflicted with the "No I hate fun and everything must be REALISTIC and set in the CURRENT DAY/COLD WAR" virus will not have their minds drastically changed by an (optional) railgun tank. They're already losing sleep over the 2035 setting in general (because they hate fun).

If you guys do this I will send you gifts of candy and alcohol from the distant land of New Zealand and Australia.

Additionally, if someone doesn't like the tank, they simply won't use it in their missions. And the people that hate fun tend to play in like minded communities that will also not use the tank in their missions.

The people that DO like the tank, will use it, and play on missions that have it. It's a win win. And if a fun-hater joins a server with a railgun tank in it? What do you think will happen? "Wow what the fuck, I'm getting a refund because of this minor inconvenience".

No, they will say "Aw man its the railgun tank" then move on with their lives.

You lose absolutely nothing from including it (assuming you've already done the hard work on the model, which appears to be the case)

And the initial teaser had a railgun tank (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L4GUdUl9Bn4#t=31s) at the end of it, don't tug at my gauss-loving heartstrings for 2 years then tell me its over :(

Voting yes; anybody who votes no hates fun.

Why not! Railguns will bring a little bit of futuristic theme into this game!
/VOTED UP

If I knew where all you upvoters live I'd ply you with gifts and money as a thank you

The actual rail gun size on the tank is already made and works well, this tank is not a future tank but current technology applied to a tracked vehicle.

Think the railgun tank will take too much power and would be overpowered? Just say you dialed down the power, give it the stats of a normal tank, BAM. Reasonably believable railgun tank. "But why have it if its just a reskinned normal tank" I hear you say? http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool <- That's why.

@ProGamer A developer said this in an interview. I only speak english, so I can't verify the accuracy of this, but this is apparently the interview where this was said: http://www.gamekings.tv/videos/interview-met-joris-jan-van-t-land-over-arma-3/

No. Just no.

Why not?

Let me start from the beginning:

For years have I been looking for a realistic military game. Then I finally found Arma. I first played the Arma 3 Alpha and I loved it. No one-man-armies, no driving and gunning a tank (or any vehicles with a gun), support for mods, the editor...just the realism...and much, much more. That's what made Arma special to me. And now, how realistic is a railgun on a tank? Do you even know how much power a railgun needs? And you also want no bullet drop and no travel time, don't you?

I love Arma for being realistic as well but I can't understand why you have the need to "defend" Arma 3 from a realistic rail-gun concept that is likely already in prototype form in some top secret testing facility.

Though I would think that the tank appears to be using a Coil gun system which small compact version exist.

@ProGamer

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/02/28/navy-unleashes-its-electromagnetic-railgun-outside-of-the-lab-video/

Quote:
"Navy says that the railgun project, initiated in 2005, will yield a 20- to 32-megajoule weapon that shoots a distance of 50 to 100 nautical miles (roughly 90 to 185 kilometers)."

So, this means that you could literally shoot someone who's on the other side of Altis with this tank. Now please tell me that isn't OP.

Btw, they're JUST EVALUATING two railguns for SHIPS. I don't think they'll mount them on a tank in the near future if they're not even sure they'll mount them on ship.

I have made a Coil-Gun myself so don't tell me it costs too much or is not realistic.

I actually saw someone making a ticket a about a coilgun, but that was in the early alpha. There is a big difference between a railgun and a coilgun. Although it is possible (in theory) to mount a coilgun on a tank, no one's actually tried it (AFAIK).

The Chinese are making a Coil-Gun tank as we speak.

There, title and description edited. Now we can have one totally pointless ticket instead of two.

MADE IN CHINA

I bet it'll break after launching the first projectile. :D

But humor aside, really sorry for your ticket. I've never seen a ticket being closed so early. It was like 4 minutes, right? :D

Okay, so the coilgun could in theory be done, but what's the point? Do you want better accuracy, less/no bullet drop, higher projectile speed? What is it that makes you want the coilgun so much?

Well, MadDogX agrees with me. That's good.

ProGamer, please tell me why is it that you want the coilgun so much? Do you want better accuracy, less/no bullet drop, higher projectile speed?

So, why do you want them, anyway?

But, what is their attribute that makes them so special? Why are they better than regular guns?

It doesn't matter what you call it. The realism crowd will vote against things like this on principle. Most people don't even know the difference between a railgun and a coil gun, so the title will make no difference.

In any case, both tickets are/were about the same tank (since there is no official info on whether it was supposed to be a rail- or coilgun), therefore the second one was a duplicate.

You may aswell stop arguing; your ticket will not be re-opened and any future tickets on the subject will be closed on sight.

I think it could be used even in the main story. Imagine the iranians have just two or three of those, it's a very rare experimental weapon. How cool would it be if you had to destroy them as a special forces member? If the iranians are actually able to compete with NATO, they should have an edge over the enemy. Maybe it's not 100% realistic, but hey, show some imagination. Btw i think that it's more realistic to have a rail/coil gun tank in the game than the idea of Iran sucesfully waging conventional war on NATO. Just my opinion...
/VOTED UP

You completely seem to overestimate the amount of energy a capacitor can hold compared to the chemical energy that is stored into the propellant of a shell.

Progamer, while there are differences between coilguns and railguns, for most people the terms are synonymous. BIS knows exactly what we're talking about. Don't worry about it.

I´ve used a calculator to see what kind of energy requirements a coilgun would have that´d fire a 5.5 kg projectile with a muzzle velocity of 1800 m/sec (about the velocity of a soviet made KE penetrator) and an energy efficiency of 66,6 %.

Av. Power output is 668,250 Megawatts
Av. Power input is 0,045 Megawatts

Muzzle Energy is 9 megajoules. This weapon has roughly 2 megajoules of muzzle energy over the best chemically propelled KE penetrators today (~ 7 megajoules, roundabout.).

This means you need a power source that can generate the above stated power. We can build capacitators of that size today, and we can fit them into an average sized room. I am making an assumption here, but if they are subject to moore's law like most other electronic devices, these will be small enough to be fitted into a tank.

A Railgun can theoretically produce much higher muzzle energies (the naval gun the US is testing now apparently has 39 MJ of energy on target, and roughly twice that at the muzzle, but it also has humongous energy requirements.

These things are not impossible in the 2035 timeframe. If you don´t like them, don´t use them. As far as tactics go, they are only different in the sense that they cannot fire non-magnetic projectiles. IE, these guns will likely not be able to fire HE rounds.

Destroying such a tank is also much different. It would be like a massive electric explosion in a powerplant, going on for minutes until the capacitators are discharged. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QlWDpD9-gM

These would be super fun for the effects people. Also getting zapped by lightning from exploding tanks would be amazing. Not putting these in is missing out on a great chance of putting in some unique Units.

THANK YOU instagoat, see it is possible you naysayers.

@InstaGoat

So, coilgun tanks can't fire HE rounds? That could make balance it out. The regular tanks have HE and AP rounds, but the coilgun tanks have only AP rounds which are slightly (just slightly) faster than the regular rounds.

You could balance by giving the railgun tank lighter armour and a slower movement speed, to make up for all the power gear it's carrying about. But the cannon could be more accurate and perhaps a faster projectile. You'd have to play it like a tank destroyer. Could be fun.

@Doln

Great ideas. The coilgun tank could have lighter armour and slower movement speed and only fire AP rounds, but it could have less (but still some) bullets drop and a bit higher projectile speed.

Real life tanks tend to either be heavily armored and slow, or lightly armored but comparatively nimble.

Putting a super expensive and complex weapon system on a platform that is both slow AND lightly armored seems like a pretty bad idea, as far as survivability is concerned. ;)

So what are we speculating about here? What is the exact wording used by DnA in the Interview? Maybe some Dutch people can translate.

Its offensive capabilities would offset the movement speed and armour nerf

So...maybe the same armour, but a lot slower movement speed? The Merkava IV has about 60 kph movement speed. Maybe slow it down by 20 kph?

Why do you need to nerf anything? If you dont want it in the mission, don't add it in the mission. I myself would be sad if its not in the game, its been teased since the game was announced.

The big drawbacks of a Coilgun tank would be that it cannot use multi-material or explosive ammunition, because of the massive magnetic fields and electric forces involved in firing.

I am not sure how quickly it could fire, but I think about 6 rounds a minute are realistic. Since you´re also using pretty beefy capacitators and very, very high load electric power systems, you cannot run the tank charged up all the time. But once it is charged, you need to put the power somewhere or you´re going to ruin your capacitators: ie, if the gun is hot, you need to fire it or risk cooking your equipment.

Catastrophic damage to the weapons system also means that you basically have the equivalent of a large industrial transformer blowing up on you. Electric fires of that scale are massively dangerous: there would not be a lot of shrapnel, but there would be tens of thousands of volts strong lightning arcs licking through the air around the tank. If a charged up capacitator gets hit, you end up with the entire charged uncontrolledly exploding into the tank and everything around it.

It would be nice to get an electrical engineer's opinion on this, because the destruction effects of this alone are so different from anything else.

That said, this gun could theoretically produce -much- larger ranges than your run of the mill gun, and combined with some sort of AT missile launcher or RWS station, a tank armed with such a gun could out range any chemical-based gun on the battlefield.

You could also use the guns massive magnetic field to wreak havoc on the battlefield. Every time the tank fires, metal will be drawn up to the gun and tossed forwards. You could create supremely lethal anti-personell shells, like the canister rounds used in western tanks, except with a lot more force and shot in them.

The problem is power requirements. Such a vehicle would probably have a massive generator, and might even be entirely electric. That means that every time the tank fires, it will drain power reserves away from the motive system until the power levels have levelled again. That means if you decide to move, your gun will not re-charge. Only stationary tanks would get maximum recharging times, and the faster they go, the slower their gun will charge up. The lesser the charge, the weaker will the shell be.

Essentially, these systems are terribly complex in their behaviour. I think if the tank got removed, this may be the reason for it, rather than a lack of realism.

Bohemia has handwaved away details like that many, many times before. Surely this doesn't have to be any different.

The US Navy is currently experimenting with this technology and I think it would possibly be fielded on US warships by 2035.

I feel as though a railgun tank would be unrealistic because of the non-explosive properties of its ordinance, not to mention the electricity requirements. I'm not going to downvote because I think it's cool as hell - but a modder should be able to add this in fairly easily - the muzzle effect can be stolen from the mi-48's exhaust vents, and the actual projectile could be an extremely high speed normal round with config tweaks.

http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_159556/EM-Electromagnetic-Railgun?from=homepage-rzz

FYI

I dont mind if they add two T-100 version.
One with the railgun gun and another with a Merkava like cannon so you could visually tell the difference.

The railgun and coax would only really be anti tank anyway and one could argue that the additional space needed for the PSU would lower the ammo count for the rods.

But the game NEEDS a conventional opfor tank if people are supposed to have tank vs tank battles. A point and click super speed rod with no drop vs a normal tank isnt really fair.

LoL, not that I would mind opfor finally getting something OP for once!

Mass closing ancient tickets with no activity for > 12 months; assume fixed or too trivial.

If this issue is still relevant in current dev build, please re-post.